The same lib media outlet that took down George Allen over a dunder-headed moment on the campaign trail in order to perpetuate the GOP=racist meme is trying to kick up dirt over a stone — a stupid stone — that has been painted over and turned over for years.

What does it say about Rick Perry? Nothing. Nada. Zip.

While the Post tries to impose an old narrative on Perry and squeeze blood from a stone, the reality is that Perry has gone out of his way to pander to left-wing impulses on race.

This is the guy that has disparaged his own base as racist in two separate GOP debates.

During the presidential debate in Tampa last night, in the midst of a discussion about illegal immigration, Texas governor Rick Perry defended granting lower in-state tuition rates to illegals as follows:

In the state of Texas, if you’ve been in the state of Texas for three years, if you’re working towards your college degree, and if you are working and pursuing citizenship in the state of Texas, you pay in-state tuition there.

And the bottom line is it doesn’t make any difference what the sound of your last name is. That is the American way. No matter how you got into that state, from the standpoint of your parents brought you there or what have you. And that’s what we’ve done in the state of Texas.

And I’m proud that we are having those individuals be contributing members of our society rather than telling them, you go be on the government dole.

This was Perry’s low point, and it’s exactly the kind of insulting garbage we don’t need out of Republican candidates, because we’re going to get plenty of it from the Democrats. So the opponents of providing taxpayer-funded lollipops to illegal immigrants are reacting badly to the sound of their last names? What a vile insinuation.

NEW YORK (AP) — Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney waded into a tense foreign policy dispute Tuesday by criticizing the Palestinian Authority’s effort to seek a formal recognition of statehood by the U.N. General Assembly.

The Republican rivals also used the jockeying at the U.N. to assail President Barack Obama’s policy toward Israel.

Perry, the Texas governor and Republican front-runner, is pledging in a speech in New York strong support for Israel and criticizing Obama for demanding concessions from the Jewish state that Perry says emboldened the Palestinians to seek recognition by the U.N.

“We are indignant that certain Middle Eastern leaders have discarded the principle of direct negotiations between the sovereign nation of Israel and the Palestinian leadership,” Perry said in excerpts provided by one of his aides to The Associated Press. “And we are equally indignant that the Obama administration’s Middle East policy of appeasement has encouraged such an ominous act of bad faith.”

In a written statement before Perry spoke, Romney called the diplomatic maneuvering at the United Nations this week an “unmitigated diplomatic disaster.” The former Massachusetts governor also accused Obama’s administration of “repeated efforts over three years to throw Israel under the bus and undermine its negotiating position.”

“That policy must stop now,” Romney said.

The two Republicans who lead in early polls for the Republican nomination, as well as their lesser-known opponents, are intent on showing they stand strongly behind Israel, an effort to appeal to Jewish voters and donors who play a pivotal role in presidential elections. So they’re trying to grab a share of the spotlight as the Palestinians push for statehood this week at the U.N.

Perry and Romney weighed in as Obama was in New York for meetings on the sidelines of the General Assembly. He planned to meet later in the week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The U.S. has promised a veto in the Security Council, but the Palestinians can press for a more limited recognition of statehood before the full — and much more supportive — General Assembly. The Obama administration has pushed hard for countries around the world to block the Palestinian bid, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday there was still time to avert a divisive showdown.

Obama has been criticized by Republicans and many pro-Israel activists for seeming to push the Jewish state harder than the Palestinians to make compromises to achieve peace. Among other things, Obama has called on Israel to cease building housing settlements in the West Bank and to negotiate the scope of the Palestinian state using 1967 borders as a starting point — a diplomatic position the U.S. has long maintained but one that has never before been explicitly embraced by a U.S. president.

Complaints about Obama’s Israel policy helped a Republican, Bob Turner, win a special election in a heavily Jewish and Democratic New York congressional district last week.

“It’s vitally important for America to preserve alliances with leaders who seek to preserve peace and stability in the region,” Perry said in the speech. “But today, neither adversaries nor allies know where America stands. Our muddle of a foreign policy has created great uncertainty in the midst of the Arab Spring.”

Romney called on Obama to unequivocally reaffirm the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and promise to cut foreign assistance to the Palestinians if they succeed in getting U.N. recognition. He also called for the United States to re-evaluate its funding of U.N. programs and its relationship with any nation voting in favor of recognition.

Perry talks about his faith, forsaking talk of jobs for
a day

LYNCHBURG, Va. — Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a man of faith, and one of the big
questions about him has been whether he will seek the presidency more as an
evangelist or as a job creator.

On the debate stage, Perry has done the latter. But he demonstrated Wednesday
that he will not shy away from cloaking his candidacy in his Christianity,
delivering an address here at the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University that
presented his life in deeply spiritual terms and cast his political aspirations
as destiny.

In perhaps his most reflective and personal remarks as a Republican
presidential candidate, Perry never once said the word he utters just about
everywhere else: “jobs.” His 20-minute speech was shorn of policy prescriptions
and denouncements of President Obama.

Instead, the evangelical Christian governor spoke the language of the
movement with ease. He talked about the many nights in his 20s he spent
pondering his purpose, “wondering what to do with this one life among the
billions that were on the planet,” but knowing that God’s answers would be
revealed to him in due time.

Perry mused about his personal failings: not realizing his dream of becoming
a veterinarian because he flunked organic chemistry, being ordered to do
push-ups as a college cadet when his superiors in morning inspections discovered
insufficiently shined shoes, straying from his faith and being “lost” as a young
Air Force pilot overseas.

“He who knows the number of drops in the ocean, he counts the sands in the
desert, he knows you by name. . . . He doesn’t require perfect
people to execute his perfect plan,” Perry said before an estimated 13,000
students and faculty members who filled the basketball arena here for their
thrice-weekly convocation.

Then, invoking Moses and David of Scripture, he added: “God uses broken
people to reach a broken world. The mistakes of yesterday say nothing about the
possibilities of tomorrow.”

Recent past presidents spoke comfortably about their faith, including George
W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Bush shared a narrative
of his religious conversion — that he went on a walk with the Rev. Billy Graham,
joined a Bible study group and overcame his alcoholism.

“Rick Perry’s a more overt, less subtle guy than George W. Bush, and he is
going to be more overt in his policy statements and his statements about his
faith,” said Richard Land, a longtime leader of the Southern Baptist Convention
who has spoken with Perry about his faith. “He talks about his faith in terms
that evangelicals will find completely identifiable.”

Before he began his campaign in August, Perry drew 30,000 people to a revival
prayer session at a Houston stadium. Behind the scenes, he has been courting
evangelical leaders, including at a recent retreat on a remote Texas ranch.
But it remained unclear how directly he would discuss his evangelism in
public.

He answered that question on Wednesday.

“This is one of his early attempts to say: ‘This is who I am,’ ” said Michael
Cromartie, director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program at the Ethics and
Public Policy Center.

“It’s like he had somebody like Rick Warren helping him write,” he added.
Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life,” Cromartie said, “is
about how there’s a plan for everybody. That’s what Perry’s trying to say, that
God has a plan for him, and it’s a really big one — to be the next president of
the United States.”

A lifelong Methodist, Perry regularly attends Lake Hills Church, a relatively
new and modern evangelical megachurch in Austin, where the Rev. Mac Richard
incorporates live music, movies and drama in his services.

Perry’s advisers say he neither wears his faith on his sleeve nor covers it
up. He usually prays before meals and, as governor, has spoken at prayer
services and has issued executive orders to pray for rain.

“You wouldn’t necessarily notice it on a daily basis, but he is not at all
self-conscious or shy about talking about faith or displaying it when he feels
like it’s called for,” said Ray Sullivan, Perry’s communications director. “It
is just who he is.”

William Martin, a professor at Rice University who studies religious
conservatives, has questioned the compassion of Perry’s health-care and
socioeconomic record.

“I looked at his policies, and they didn’t seem to be something that would
flow from a heart full of Christian love, so I was thinking he had found
religion conveniently,” Martin said. “But as best I can tell, it seems to be a
long-standing conviction of his.”

Several other Republican presidential candidates also speak openly about how
their faith guides their public service, including Rep. Michele Bachmann
(Minn.), who is scheduled to speak at Liberty University later this month. Jerry
Falwell Jr., the college’s chancellor, said she would be the fifth of the eight
top GOP hopefuls to visit the campus.

Falwell said he would not endorse a candidate in the race, but he gave Perry
a particularly enthusiastic introduction, calling him “one of the most pro-life
governors in American history” and likening him to Reagan.

Absent from the list of those who’ve made a pilgrimage here is Perry’s top
rival for the nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has
rarely, if ever, publicly discussed his Mormon faith during his current
campaign.

With his speech here, Perry drew one of his sharpest contrasts with Romney,
as well as former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. The contrast was not only over
religion — Huntsman, too, is Mormon — but also over their backgrounds. Romney
and Huntsman grew up in privileged families, but Perry spoke at length about his
more humble origins.

Perry said the only world he knew while growing up was “that little place
called Paint Creek.” The closest post office to his home was 16 miles away, he
said, and there were only two places of worship nearby: “a Methodist church and
a Baptist church — your choice.”

The only exposure he had to someplace else, he said, came in 1964, when he
traveled to the East Coast for the National Boy Scout Jamboree.

“For me, indoor plumbing was a bit of a luxury until I was about 5 years
old,” Perry said. “And I didn’t worry about the latest fashions; my mother sewed
most of my clothes. I didn’t know that we weren’t wealthy in a material sense. I
knew that we were rich in a lot of things that really mattered — in a spiritual
way.”

Perry said he turned to God not because he wanted to but because “I had
nowhere else to turn. I was 27. I had been an officer in the United States Air
Force, commanding a fairly substantial piece of sophisticated equipment, telling
men and women what to do, but I was lost — spiritually and emotionally. And I
didn’t know how to fix it.”

Rick Perry a ‘mensch’

A self described Democrat, Friedman came in fourth in a six man race when he ran
against Perry as an independent in the 2006 Texas gubernatorial
election,

I have been quoted as saying that when I die, I am to
be cremated, and the ashes are to be thrown in Rick Perry’s hair. Yet, simply
put, Rick Perry and I are incapable of resisting each other’s charm. He is not
only a good sport, he is a good, kindhearted man, and he once sat in on drums
with ZZ Top. A guy like that can’t be all bad. When I ran for governor of Texas
as an independent in 2006, the Crips and the Bloods ganged up on me. When I
lost, I drove off in a 1937 Snit, refusing to concede to Perry. Three days later
Rick called to give me a gracious little pep talk, effectively talking me down
from jumping off the bridge of my nose. Very few others were calling at that
time, by the way. Such is the nature of winning and losing and politicians and
life. You might call what Rick did an act of random kindness. Yet in my mind it
made him more than a politician, more than a musician; it made him a
mensch.

These days, of course, I would support Charlie Sheen
over Obama. Obama has done for the economy what pantyhose did for foreplay.
Obama has been perpetually behind the curve. If the issue of the day is jobs and
the economy, Rick Perry is certainly the nuts-and-bolts kind of guy you want in
there.

Perry Will Win Big

You read it here first: Rick Perry will amble to the
Republican nomination and will win the presidential election easily. In June I
wrote an article — “Is
Perry the One?” —
suggesting that Rick Perry may be the best nominee for Republicans. His
personal life is spotless. His policies reflect his political beliefs and have
worked the way conservatives intend.

Talking like a tough Texan is the worst thing anyone
can say about him, but that attack will fail. The unpopularity of George W.
Bush in his last two years created a false notion among leftist elites that
America does not like cowboys. Wrong: we love leaders who look confident and
act decisively; we love our frontiersman and cowboys. We like straight talk and
straight shooting. Most Americans also sense that we desperately need a tough
hombre in the White House in 2013.

We also want heart. Perry’s long and happy marriage
shows that heart. His hard work on the family cotton farm shows that too.
Perry’s honorable and significant service in the military shows the courage of a
true patriot. His love of America’s most noble private organization, the Boy
Scouts, shows that heart too. Perry’s unabashed faith in God will hurt him only
in Manhattan or in San Francisco.

In stark contrast is our current president. Has Obama
ever really worked a day in his life? Did he walk out of church when Reverend
Wright damned America, as Perry would have done? Can anyone even picture Obama
as a Boy Scout? Does anyone believe that Obama, who did not give an Easter
measure and who in private parties sneers at Americans clinging to their faith,
believes only in anti-Americanism?

Perry, even at what more nuanced conservatives may
consider his rough edges, stands in dramatic contrast to Obama. In a nation
which, according to Gallup, is more conservative than at any time in twenty
years and in which every state has more conservatives than liberals, the
Republican Party needs a conservative — not a “compassionate” conservative —
to run straight at Obama.

Why is Washington D.C. more economically upbeat
than any other part of our nation? Our nation’s capital is doing so well
because politicians have made the federal government our biggest growth
industry. The attacks on Perry by flacks like David Axelrod —
Texas’ economic growth is because oil — will backfire on the left: yes,
extracting oil, coal, and natural gas can create millions of high-paying jobs,
make the dollar stronger, and increase tax revenues without raising tax rates.
Yet that is what clueless leftists will accuse him of trying to
do.

Perry is not Reagan but he is more like Reagan than
any Republican in the last fifty years. He is physically strong. He honed his
speaking skills as a young salesman, and those who worry about him talking like
Bush should listen: he sounds more like Reagan.

Perry, like Reagan, governed the second-largest state
in the Union for multiple terms. He also has had the chance to connect with
other Republican governors, arguably the strongest force in the party. Several
governors have come close to endorsing Perry already and more will openly
support him. His message of genuine federalism is vital to these governors.
Strong support from conservative Republican governors will make winning the
nomination much easier.

Next year anyone touched with the deficit deal in
Washington will be damaged political goods. Republican political leaders who
have created prosperity at the state level will look much better. Rick Perry in
2012 will not just be able to run against Barack Obama and congressional
Democrats, whose leaders have appalling bad approval ratings, but Perry will be
able to run against the federal government itself. He will run as the
longest-serving governor in America running a state (as large as a nation) which
works.

Polls already show Perry leading the Republican
field, ahead of a much better-known Romney who has been
campaigning for years. Gallup shows a very
high intensity level for
Perry as well. As other conservatives drop out, their support will inevitably
gravitate to Perry. A united Republican Party in 2012, led by a sitting
governor, will sweep to victory. An America given the choice between an
unapologetic conservative and a clear liberal will give that conservative a
landslide.

In 1979, enclaves of pundits were feverishly analyzing
the candidates. It was very clear what would happen: the popular conservative
big-state governor would win the nomination fast and then crush the bitter but
smiling one-term leftist in the White House. That is exactly will happen next
November 2012.

Perry Leads Prayer Rally for ‘Nation in Crisis’

HOUSTON — Standing on a stage surrounded by thousands of fellow Christians on Saturday morning, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas called on Jesus to bless and guide the nation’s military and political leaders and “those who cannot see the light in the midst of all the darkness.”

“Lord, you are the source of every good thing,” Mr. Perry said, as he bowed his head, closed his eyes and leaned into a microphone at Reliant Stadium here. “You are our only hope, and we stand before you today in awe of your power and in gratitude for your blessings, and humility for our sins. Father, our heart breaks for America. We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see anger in the halls of government, and as a nation we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us, and for that we cry out for your forgiveness.”

In a 13-minute address, Mr. Perry read several passages from the Bible during a prayer rally he sponsored. Thousands of people stood or kneeled in the aisles or on the concrete floor in front of the stage, some wiping away tears and some shouting, “Amen!”

The rally was seen as one of the biggest tests of Mr. Perry’s political career, coming as he nears a decision on whether to seek the Republican nomination for president. While the event will be sure to help Mr. Perry if he tries to establish himself as the religious right’s favored candidate, it also opens him up to criticism for mixing religion and politics in such a grand and overtly Christian fashion.

In many ways, the rally was unprecedented, even in Texas, where faith and politics have long intersected without much controversy — the governor, as both a private citizen and an elected leader, delivering a message to the Lord at a Christian prayer rally he created, while using his office’s prestige, letterhead, Web site and other resources to promote it. Mr. Perry said he wanted people of all faiths to attend, but Christianity dominated the service and the religious affiliations of the crowd. The prayers were given in Jesus Christ’s name, and the many musical performers sang of Christian themes of repentance and salvation.

Mr. Perry, a lifelong Methodist who regularly attends an evangelical megachurch near his home in West Austin, has been speaking and preaching in sanctuaries throughout Texas since he was state agricultural commissioner in the 1990s. Organizers for the event, called The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis, estimated that more than 30,000 people were at Reliant Stadium when Mr. Perry spoke. The seating capacity is 71,500, and tens of thousands of seats in the upper decks were empty.

“I wish you could see what I see here,” announced Luis Cataldo, a leader of the International House of Prayer, a Christian ministry in Kansas City, Mo., as the event began at 10 a.m. “This is the body of Christ.”

While those on the stage avoided making overt political statements or expressions of political support for Mr. Perry, many in the audience made it clear in interviews that they would vote for the governor should he enter the presidential race.

Liz Lara, 62, who lives in La Vernia, Tex., drove about 200 miles to Houston with her daughter and two grandchildren to attend the rally. She said the family came to support Mr. Perry and pray for God’s help in solving the nation’s problems. “I believe that God has prepared Rick Perry for such a time as this,” she said. “I believe he will be our next president.”

At one point, Mr. Perry asked those in the audience to pray for President Obama. “Father, we pray for our president, that you impart your wisdom upon him, that you would guard his family,” he said.

Mr. Perry addressed the crowd nine days after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against him by a national group of atheists arguing that his participation in the rally in his official capacity as governor violated the First Amendment’s requirement of separation of church and state.

Members and supporters of that group, the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, were among dozens of people protesting outside the stadium. Others included gay activists who criticized Mr. Perry for supporting the American Family Association, which organized and financed the rally. The association is a conservative evangelical group based in Mississippi that is listed as an antigay hate group by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.

Mr. Perry had invited his fellow governors to join him, but only Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a Republican, attended. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida made a video statement that was played in the stadium.

HOUSTON — Standing on a stage surrounded by thousands of fellow Christians on Saturday morning, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas called on Jesus to bless and guide the nation’s military and political leaders and “those who cannot see the light in the midst of all the darkness.”

“Lord, you are the source of every good thing,” Mr. Perry said, as he bowed his head, closed his eyes and leaned into a microphone at Reliant Stadium here. “You are our only hope, and we stand before you today in awe of your power and in gratitude for your blessings, and humility for our sins. Father, our heart breaks for America. We see discord at home. We see fear in the marketplace. We see anger in the halls of government, and as a nation we have forgotten who made us, who protects us, who blesses us, and for that we cry out for your forgiveness.”

In a 13-minute address, Mr. Perry read several passages from the Bible during a prayer rally he sponsored. Thousands of people stood or kneeled in the aisles or on the concrete floor in front of the stage, some wiping away tears and some shouting, “Amen!”

The rally was seen as one of the biggest tests of Mr. Perry’s political career, coming as he nears a decision on whether to seek the Republican nomination for president. While the event will be sure to help Mr. Perry if he tries to establish himself as the religious right’s favored candidate, it also opens him up to criticism for mixing religion and politics in such a grand and overtly Christian fashion.

In many ways, the rally was unprecedented, even in Texas, where faith and politics have long intersected without much controversy — the governor, as both a private citizen and an elected leader, delivering a message to the Lord at a Christian prayer rally he created, while using his office’s prestige, letterhead, Web site and other resources to promote it. Mr. Perry said he wanted people of all faiths to attend, but Christianity dominated the service and the religious affiliations of the crowd. The prayers were given in Jesus Christ’s name, and the many musical performers sang of Christian themes of repentance and salvation.

Mr. Perry, a lifelong Methodist who regularly attends an evangelical megachurch near his home in West Austin, has been speaking and preaching in sanctuaries throughout Texas since he was state agricultural commissioner in the 1990s. Organizers for the event, called The Response: A Call to Prayer for a Nation in Crisis, estimated that more than 30,000 people were at Reliant Stadium when Mr. Perry spoke. The seating capacity is 71,500, and tens of thousands of seats in the upper decks were empty.

“I wish you could see what I see here,” announced Luis Cataldo, a leader of the International House of Prayer, a Christian ministry in Kansas City, Mo., as the event began at 10 a.m. “This is the body of Christ.”

While those on the stage avoided making overt political statements or expressions of political support for Mr. Perry, many in the audience made it clear in interviews that they would vote for the governor should he enter the presidential race.

Liz Lara, 62, who lives in La Vernia, Tex., drove about 200 miles to Houston with her daughter and two grandchildren to attend the rally. She said the family came to support Mr. Perry and pray for God’s help in solving the nation’s problems. “I believe that God has prepared Rick Perry for such a time as this,” she said. “I believe he will be our next president.”

At one point, Mr. Perry asked those in the audience to pray for President Obama. “Father, we pray for our president, that you impart your wisdom upon him, that you would guard his family,” he said.

Mr. Perry addressed the crowd nine days after a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against him by a national group of atheists arguing that his participation in the rally in his official capacity as governor violated the First Amendment’s requirement of separation of church and state.

Members and supporters of that group, the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, were among dozens of people protesting outside the stadium. Others included gay activists who criticized Mr. Perry for supporting the American Family Association, which organized and financed the rally. The association is a conservative evangelical group based in Mississippi that is listed as an antigay hate group by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.

Mr. Perry had invited his fellow governors to join him, but only Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a Republican, attended. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida made a video statement that was played in the stadium.